Firefox for Windows 8 Metro dropped over low interest

In what is perhaps the most anti-climactic ending possible to Mozilla's long and oft-delayed process of bringing Firefox to Window 8, the company has put the kibosh on the entire project, citing reasons of little user interest and freeing up resources for other more fruitful projects.

The announcement comes little more than a month after finally launching the beta version of the browser, something that had been delayed multiple time over as many months due to various setbacks and other issues. Use of the touch browser hasn't been as high as Mozilla wants, however, and so it has chosen to end the project altogether.

The company has seen no more than 1,000 active daily users testing the Metro browser, which is a tiny number compared to the vast quantities of users testing the pre-release desktop version of the browser. For this reason, shipping would mean doing so with comparatively little real world testing.

Firefox's Vice President Johnathan Nightingale summed up the issue, saying continuing the project would mean "significant investment and low impact." Of course, it was suggested that if the Metro interface takes off to wild popularity at some point, effort will be shifted back to the browser, but for now effort will be dedicated to more fruitful endeavors.